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Frozen Feasting At Fall Festivals

This time of year, as leaves turn to
glorious multicolor, steamy hot days of summer vanish, and autumn decorations
go up, I can often be found … crying.

But it seems everyone else can be
found at harvest festivals.

Harvest fests, as you might imagine,
are annual celebrations that take place around the time of the harvest. Makes
sense. This would be the harvest of food crops, you understand, not the
biannual politician harvest that’s often rotten, anyway.

Ancient people celebrated the
harvest every year because they didn’t like starvation. That was pretty much
it. Why else celebrate fall? Did the hunter/gatherers look at each other and
say, “Oh, look! The sun is disappearing—we might freeze to death again this
year. Let’s party!”

They did not.

But possibly the only thing worse
than freezing to death is freezing to death while hungry. They were happy to
wrest a few grains away from the bugs and birds, so they could fill the
storehouses with boxes of Pre-Ricestoric Crispies and Frosted By Next Month
Flakes.

“Good news, honey—we won’t have to
eat the kids this year.”

“Oh, good. Now, about that vacation
trip across the land bridge …”

My home town has a harvest fest in
mid-September, and at first glance that doesn’t seem to make sense. Remember,
Thanksgiving was originally about being thankful for the harvest, and that’s in
November. Unless you’re in Canada, in which case it’s earlier and more polite.
(“Do you mind terribly if we take your land and give you smallpox? Thank you so
much.”)

At second glance, harvest festivals
in Europe often took place near the Harvest Moon, which is indeed near the
autumn equinox, which this year is September 22nd. I know, because
for me it’s a day of mourning. It marks that time of year when we get those
aforementioned beautiful colors, apple cider, hay rides, cursing over faulty
thirty year old home heating systems, covering your entire home with plastic,
sobbing into your heating bills …

Where was I?

So, it’s not unusual at all for
harvest fests to come at the same time as Albion’s, which this year is
September 20th and 21st.I’m okay with that, because there’s at least a chance that the weather
will still be warm enough to actually want to go outside to a harvest fest. By
the time Thanksgiving rolls around, you know you’re going to be having your
holiday indoors, and that you should have your snow boots ready, just in case.

You know what’s a crazy holiday?
Halloween.

“Hey, there’s frost on the
pumpkin—literally! Let’s dress up in costumes that we’ll have to hide under
winter coats, then go running around the neighborhood until we’re so cold we
have to pour the hot chocolate over our hands so we can thaw them enough to
open the candy!”

Talk about a transition period. I
still don’t understand why these controversial sexy adult Halloween costumes
ever got popular outside of southern California. “Ooh, your pasty-white skin
and uncontrollable shivering are so hot! I mean, not literally hot …”

The local harvest fests generally
come before that, but after the August days when you can’t walk in the streets
because your shoes melt. They also give us a chance to spend a weekend ignoring
that storm of hot wind-blown bull scat, otherwise known as election season. But
there’s one problem I always had with September harvests fests:

Did anyone ask the harvesters?

Places like England, where harvest
festivals date back to pagan times, have shorter growing seasons, so maybe the
harvest was over by then. But here in Indiana, there are still a lot of crops
in the field at that point. I mean, Albion’s Harvest Fest has a corn maze. This
requires corn.

Corn crops have to stay up for some
time, to provide cover for deer as they lie in wait to jump out in front of
innocent cars. Now, I’ve never been a farmer,because I don’t like to work hard. And I’ll grant you, there’s no time
of the year when there’s no work for
farmers to do. But if we’re going to celebrate a harvest, shouldn’t there be a harvest, first?

Maybe this is a break time, giving
them a chance to celebrate what they already picked, and rest up for the
harvesting to come. Maybe the corn isn’t ready, and they’ve already finished
picking from the apple, cake, and lunchbox trees.

What? I told you I’m not a farmer.
Maybe the lunchboxes grow underground.

A wagon ride tour of Albion at the harvest fest in, yes, Albion.

My daughter, son-in-law, and grand-twins a few years ago at the Albion Harvest Fest ... the kids are about twice this age, now.

Funny take on holidays. Phoenix and 29 Palms are great for Halloween as it is still warm. You can wear all sorts of costumes. Our church in Iowa would have a Harvest Festival in October. If we were lucky, it was an Indian Summer. I still remember those dear church ladies daring anyone with their eyes not to take some of their specialties. I put a similar scene in Gather the Children. The poor soul couldn't figure out why three women were suddenly glaring at him. By the way, we were still picking corn in early November. The high school even let the farm boys take off days to help with the harvest. That didn't go well with some of the teachers. Nothing like a rural community!

I remember when I was a kid some of the students who were farmers would take off to help with the harvest, but that hasn't happened around here much for some years -- at least, not that anyone talks about it. In any case, it's the same here: Corn is the last crop to be brought in, and it's not at all unusual for that to still be going on in November. It's also not unusual to see big, bright lights in the fields as harvesting goes on well into the night so they don't *have* to harvest in November!